WASHINGTON \u2013 The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday passed a $30.01 billion bill to fund the Interior Department, Environmental Protection Agency and related agencies. The measure, which passed 16-14, also blocks implementation of the EPA\u2019s plan to address climate change.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first appropriations bill to clear the committee for these agencies since 2009. It provides $11.05 billion for the Interior Department, $1.18 billion for the Bureau of Land Management, $2.72 billion to fund the National Park Service and $1.43 billion to fund the Fish and Wildlife Service.<\/p>\n
Opponents said the measure adheres to \u201cunreasonable\u201d spending limits set by the 2013 budget sequester. Also, they objected to inclusion of provisions that don\u2019t directly affect spending but instead aim to dismantle environmental laws.<\/p>\n
The office of Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., who is not on the Appropriations Committee, indicated Bennet generally supports removing the spending caps set by the 2013 sequester.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Bennet) believed the sequester was bad policy then, and it\u2019s bad policy now,\u201d said Adam Bozzi, Bennet\u2019s communications director. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason we can\u2019t come together to fix the sequester and reduce our debt in a smarter way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, defended the bill she authored against amendments from Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M. The first amendment Udall offered would increase spending levels by almost $2 billion, much of which he said would help create jobs and fund health and suicide-prevention programs for Native American tribes.<\/p>\n
Murkowski reminded the panel of the spending limits.<\/p>\n
But the money was only the first part of the debate.<\/p>\n
The bill included several policy riders \u2013 language that would affect law, not necessarily funding. Among them were riders that would defer to state and tribal standards for regulating fracking, and one that would block EPA from holding hard-rock mining and mineral-processing industries financially responsible for hazardous waste produced as a result of their operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Measure blocks agency\u2019s move to regulate carbon pollution<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[94,3929],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-111627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-gays-and-lesbians"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111627"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=111627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}